Portrait Self Evaluation

This was by far my favourite project. I had shoot portraits before in school and enjoyed it very much. At first I was interested in shooting elderly people. It seemed to me that they always had a story about something and I wanted to hear one and try and reflect it in the portrait. I was warned it would difficult but it didn't make a difference as I wasn't able to find a model. After two weeks of asking around I decided I had wasted enough time and looked for a new idea. I decided to shoot Michael as he was a new tutor joining is in the middle of the year and always seemed to be in a good mood and generally nice. I decided to try to reflect that in my portrait of him. I chooses to go with harsh lighting as I thought it would work best with his facial features and as I have always had a liking for it.

I experimented with a pro light only using a mamya RZ, and shooting in aperture F8, F16, using my partner as the model. I was pleased with the results but I still shot just before Michael came in using another model just to make sure everything was in order.

For this project I looked at Jeff Dunas' work. I liked his portraits from before and thought he would be a good inspiration for the project. I focused on his picture of Morgan Freeman. I decided to have my model talking through the entire shoot and shoot the first film at random and the second trying to focus ton his emotions. My final print was chosen from the first film as they look more natural than the others.

Test contact sheet for lighting

Contact Sheet before shoot

Contact sheet of shoot

Morgan Freeman by Jeff Dunas

I really enjoyed the interaction between photographer and model, learning about them before hand and the experience as a whole. I would love to do some more

Environment Project Self Evaluation

I found this project harder to approach than the others. I didn't have an idea for some time, until I realised that every morning I wake up to a river covered in large container boats and industries covering it. It didn't bother me at first but it made me think about industrialism on the river. I looked at Peter Kennard's work and although I found it interesting it was too strong for me. I then tried to look at a more traditional approach of landscape portraiture and research Friedrich Caspar, I liked his method of portraying landscape so vastly, but it was still too different to my idea. So I took some test shots and worked from there. I wanted the industries and other human pollution to be noticed but for it to be too obvious. I used the Bronica SQ-B and only shot with aperture F8 or F11. I also decided to Take the pictures in black and white as I thought it made more of an impact than it would have done in colour.
As I was shooting a few accident happened, the first was that I forgot to rewind the film and ended up double exposing. As I printed I the contact print I realised that the double exposed picture was far better than the others so I decided to reshoot with double exposures only. The second accident was the back of the camera kept opening during my reshoot, this lead me to loose a lot of pictures, however one picture came back half exposed and as I was printing it it came out really good, it is probably the best of the series.

Contact Sheet

This project was definantly challenging for me, the number of times I had to reshoot made me wonder if I just shouldn't change ideas during the entire time. But i'm glad i didn't,I am happy with the outcome and realised I enjoyed it more than other projects as it was more challenging but also ore rewarding.

City Project, Self evaluation

This project was in the beginning about the dirtiness of the city. There are so many health and safety rules and yet the underground is one of the dirtiest places of London.

The idea was to go to several underground stations and represent the dirtiness in them. However there were complications; I learnt I could't take pictures in the underground, it is forbidden, and on the chosen I was to go a large amount of stations were closed. I came back with a handful of useless pictures. However I had realised something else, as I sat there talking to my friend I realised that practically no one ever stooped. There was always a flow of people. I decided to focus my idea on that. I shot in rochester station using a friend as a model with him walking or running around. the pictures came out as I wished, always moving, never in focus.

Naoya Hatakeyama, Underground

For my first idea i had looked at the artist Naoya Hatakeyama and his book titled Underground where he explored large sewers and caves. His pictures are almost repulsive as they show dirty unidentifiable things. 

When my idea changed I started to look at Cartier-Bresson's decisive moment. Especially the famous picture of a man deciding to jump in a huge pool of water, frozen in mid air in the middle of his jump. I also looked at Walker Evans and his subway portraits and his idea of the forever moving people in the city.

Cartier-Bresson, Decisive Moment

Walker Evans, Subway

I based my picture on both artists, Cartier-Bresson's moving man and Walker Evans idea of the forever moving.  It was interesting changing ideas n such a different way, I preferred my new idea to the old one far better, but at the same time I wish I could have continued the first one, just to see how it would have turned out and which would have been better represented.
I enjoyed this project, and found it more challenging than the las environment task.